50 Years On, Khmer Rouge's Shadow Stalks

On 17 April 1975, tanks rolled into the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, to cheering crowds who believed that the country's long civil war might finally be over.

- SOPHAL EAR

But what followed was one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. During a brutal four-year rule, the communist-nationalist ideologues of the Khmer Rouge killed between 1.6 million and 3 million people through executions, forced labor, and starvation. It represented a quarter of the country's population at the time.

Fifty years on, the Khmer Rouge's legacy continues to shape Cambodia—politically, socially, economically, and emotionally. It's etched into every Cambodian's bones—including mine.

I write this not just as an academic or observer but as a survivor. My father died under the Khmer Rouge, succumbing to dysentery and malnutrition after being forced to work in a labor camp. My mother pretended to be Vietnamese to save our family. She escaped Cambodia with five children in 1976, crossing through Vietnam before reaching France in 1978 and finally the United States in 1985. We were among the lucky ones.

Today, Cambodia is physically unrecognizable from the bombed-out fields and empty cities of the 1970s. Phnom Penh gleams with high-rises and luxury malls. And yet beneath the glitter, the past endures—often in silence, sometimes in cynical exploitation.

The Khmer Rouge came to power on a wave of disillusionment, corruption, civil war, and rural resentment. Years of American bombing, the 1970 U.S.-backed coup that ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and the subsequent deeply unpopular U.S.-aligned military regime set the stage for the Khmer Rouge's rise.

Many Cambodians, particularly in the countryside, welcomed the Khmer Rouge, with its mix of hard-line communist ideology and extreme Cambodian nationalism, as liberators who promised to restore order and dignity. But for the next four years, the Khmer Rouge, under feared leader Pol Pot, brought terror to the nation through ideological purges, forced labor, racial genocide of minority groups, and policies that brought widespread famine.